


First Class Treatment

by wildglitterwolf



Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
Genre: Airplanes, Fear of Flying, M/M, No Plot, Plotless, Rick treats his boy right, until he doesn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:56:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26498266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildglitterwolf/pseuds/wildglitterwolf
Summary: Rick treats Cliff to first class on their flight to Italy.
Relationships: Cliff Booth/Rick Dalton
Kudos: 26





	First Class Treatment

Cliff lets out a sharp whistle as he settles in the window seat of their first class flight to Italy. Rick really did spare no expense, and he knew first class was not cheap. And even though Cliff did offer to suffer in coach, Rick would hear none of that.

“Now-now I’m not letting you sit back there that long by yourself with the riff raff. You’re gonna be joining me up front because shit, how the hell am I going to survive that long in a cramped space with no one to talk to.”

“Could join me back there. You know, with the riff raff.”

Rick was annoyed that Cliff even dare suggested he should do that, even though money was starting to be a concern. Hopefully this fucking spagehtti western could at least pay back some of the travel cost. “First class with me. Th-that’s final.”

“Heh. Alright then.”

And so now here he was. Definitely not the accommodations he had coming back from Korea. Hell, only time he’s ever been on a plane was when he’s off overseas fighting in some war. Traveling for work that won’t get you killed was a new feeling, or should he say, the kind or work where some foreigner isn’t shooting at you trying to kill you. Never know when a stunt could go wrong.

“Now see, isn’t this shit better than what you would have gotten back in coach?”

“Yeah, can’t argue with that. I mean, if I’m gonna be stuck in a metal can again for about thirteen hours, it’s great.”

“Wait. Thirteen hours???”

Cliff looks at him in disbelief that he’d go through booking and not think to ask the flight time. “You think we’d get there in what, five?”

“No, of course not. I know Rome is beyond New York but I thought maybe, fuck, maybe seven at most?”

“Alright, man. In all seriousness, have you ever looked at a map? The Atlantic is not a measly extra two hours to cross.”

“So just about eight. huh? E-eight hours. E-e-e-”

“Rick? Shit man, don’t have a breakdown before we take off.”

“I-I can’t do this, Cliff. I thought I could survive two hours but I-I don’t think I can survive that long over the ocean.”

‘What, because you won’t get a nice view to look at?”

“No, because if the plane goes down, we’ll drown!”

“And if it goes down on land, we’ll crash into a giant fireball, what’s your point?”

Yeah, Cliff regretted saying that as he watched Rick’s eyes widen and breathing getting heavier. If this plane didn’t get off the ground soon, Rick will probably run out screaming. He’s about to go in to give him a hug to help relax him but thinks against it; after all, that would just make Rick more paranoid that everyone else in the cabin had to see Rick Dalton get comforted by another man. Sometimes he thinks shit would just be much easier if he was a woman.

“Hey, man. It will be alright. You’ve flown before, nothing happened. So you’ve never flown overseas, those were the only flights I’ve ever done, and I’m still here. Trust me.”

That seemed to do the trick. If there was one thing Rick always believed, it was that he could trust Cliff completely. 

\---

Cliff was surprised after Rick’s paranoia earlier that he wasn’t that bad on take-off. But again, he has done this a fair amount of times, mainly to New York for talk and variety shows or a couple times up to Northern California for filming. And now that the flight attendants were starting to come by with their carts, it was no shock that Rick was ready to get started on those bottomless drinks.

“I got you, buddy,” Rick says with a wink to Cliff as he turns to the flight attendant now coming into their row. “Howdy, Miss. (Cliff rolls his eyes; he knows Rick’s hoping she’ll recognize him from any of his Westerns by starting off with a ‘howdy’) I’d fancy a whiskey sour, and my partner here, why, he’s a Bloody Mary kind of man.”

Cliff is trying his best not to snort and crack up. Even when around others, Rick seems to be acting. Sometimes he wonders if he’s the only one who ever sees Rick as he really is. 

The first round of drinks are placed on their tables, Cliff almost saying that she might as well leave Rick with three so she won’t have to come around for another hour, but Rick was already treating him well enough so he wasn’t going to embarrass him. Rick was more than capable of doing that on his own.

“Well, Rick. A toast to a successful trip to Italy?”

“More like praying this one lousy fucking movie gets over and done with quickly so we can get back to the states.”

“Ah, shit man. What makes you think you won’t want to move there? Hell, the Italians could end up loving you.”

“I want to be fucking able to understand people.”

“So learn Italian.”

Rick grumbles and takes a huge sip of his drink; yeah, the lady probably should have left him a few more glasses.

\---

Rick was on his fourth drink and Cliff his second when dinner started being rolled out. They had the options between the steak and the fish so Rick decided to get them one of each to share.

“Man. Definitely haven’t been treated this nice on a plane before,” Cliff says as he cuts up the steak and takes a piece, muttering with a full mouth, “Mmm, yeah. That’s good.”

Rick sticks his fork over Cliff’s arm to take his own slice and pops it in his mouth. “It’s fine. Not five stars by any means.”

“I ain’t never been to a five star place so I can’t exactly compare.”

“Huh? I’ve taken you before. I’m fucking sure of it.”

“You have, I just wasn’t allowed in.”

Rick tries to dig through his memory files trying to find an incident before Cliff chimes in to remind him.

“I didn’t have the attire to get in. Because, you know, I own like the same three outfits.”

“Oh… right.” Rick remembered what happened. It was the year Cliff first joined the _Bounty Law_ crew. At season wrap when the show was still popular, Rick decided to treat the cast and crew to some five star dining. But when they got there, Cliff and a few others didn’t make the cut with the dress code. Cliff said it was fine, that they could go on ahead and he ended up taking the rag-tag group to a Denny’s nearby. They were pretty good friends at the time, nowhere near close as they are now, so it never occurred to him that he could have offered Cliff something to wear.

“Hey. You know what? I’m gonna find you something to wear in Italy. And when we get back to the states, I’m going to take you to that restaurant and treat you to something nice.”

“I think you already treat me mighty nice as is, partner.”

Rick blushed at Cliff’s genuine smile. “Th-thanks. I guess you should try the fish.”

Cliff now takes his turn reaching over with his fork and finds a nice piece to eat. “Yeah, it’s also good. But I think the stuff I catch myself is better.”

“Well yeah, we’re eating it right after catching it, shit.”

“And you’d say it’s better than this, right?”

Rick eats a piece, obviously knowing he’s going to agree. “Yeah.”

“Alright. So when we get back to the states, we’re gonna have to plan a fishing trip after you take me to the fancy dinner place.”

“Damnit, Cliff. You’re starting to make me regret leaving.”

\---

Finally the announcement from the pilot Rick had been dreading all this time finally came: _“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now officially leaving the United States and heading over the Atlantic Ocean. Now just sit back, relax, get some sleep if you can.”_

Cliff had decided to doze off and start adjusting to the time change while Rick tried to see if he could finish the tale of “Easy Breezy” finally before he was tired enough. The bronco buster was going to have to wait; Rick’s mind was anywhere but on the story in front of him and could feel himself slowly starting to panic. 

It was at this time the flight attendants were coming around to pass out the blankets and pillows while Rick debated if he should wake Cliff up or just grab a set for him. He opts for the latter, waiting for the flight attendants to move a couple rows back before carefully throwing the blanket over Cliff. He wasn’t sure what to do with the pillow as Cliff’s head was leaning on the window, so he decided to just pull Cliff’s tray down and set it there. 

Cliff never did bother to close the window since the sun didn’t bother him, so all Rick could see was a black abyss out there, just waiting to swallow him whole. He couldn’t look away no matter how much it was starting to stress him out, his mind replaying all the thoughts he had earlier of every possible way things could go wrong.

“Hey…”

Rick’s eyes shift to see Cliff was now looking at him through heavy lidded eyes. “We-we are c-crossing the ocean n-now…”

“Hmm, oh yeah?” Cliff turns to look, not sure what he expected to see in the night and just nods. “So we are.”

“Y-yeah…” Rick turns away and tries to settle in, throwing the blanket on all the way up to his shoulders and pillow behind his head as he tries not to think about all the catastrophes he knows are waiting for him.

Suddenly Rick feels the blanket shift a bit on the side and then the warmth of the calloused hand he was so familiar with grabs his hand from underneath. He already felt so much calmer.

“Sleep, man. You’re gonna feel like shit when we arrive if you don’t.”

Cliff didn’t need to say another word. As long as he had a hold of him, Rick felt he could sleep through anything.

\---

Cliff managed to shut the window before Rick woke up so he wouldn’t take another peek outside and flip out. Instead he was greeted with the usual ‘morning’ Rick he was accustomed to: feeling hungover and bitching about how he slept, and sleeping in a chair sure as hell didn’t help.

There was a light breakfast of fruit and some pastries although it would be technically around lunch time in Italy. Rick’s mind had a hard time computing the time change.

“So what, we get there around 2 their time? And we got about two hours left and they’re fucking serving breakfast?”

“You just want more bottomless drinks before you get off.”

Rick groaned, still not happy about the whole coming to a foreign country to make a movie he knows is going to be shitty. “Why am I doing this, Cliff?”

“Because you love making movies?”

“I-I don’t know. “

“The hell you mean you don’t know?”

“This shit c-clearly isn’t working out. I should have just quit while I was ahead.”

Cliff looks up at the cabin ceiling, eyes looking like they were pleading with some miracle to knock sense into this guy, before realizing he was going to have to be the one. “Rick. I wouldn’t have followed you all the way if I didn’t believe in you. And even if it doesn’t work out then hey, you at least tried. You’ve gotten further than a lot of people could only dream of. And even if you never get where you want to be, know that you’ll always have your biggest fan right beside you. You’ll always be my favorite actor, man.”

Rick could have just said that Cliff is just supposed to say those things. And he knows now and then that Cliff tends to overfluff things just to make Rick feel good. But he’s also known Cliff long enough to know when he’s telling the truth and right now, he could tell he was.

“Thanks. Th-thanks for everything.”

Cliff nods as he peels and orange. “Man, sure wish they had bagels. I don’t know, do they have them in Italy or am I going to have to add that to the things to get when we get back to the states?”

“Heh. Shit, buddy. If everything goes well, I-I’ll gladly buy you a dozen.”

\---

Cliff slipped the window up when the pilot announced Italy was in view. “Hey, man. You made it.”

“Shit, Cliff. We haven’t landed yet. Something could still happen.”

“Want me to hold your hand again?”

Rick blushed slightly hoping no one had heard that, and without the cover of the blankets anymore he knew they couldn’t get away with that. “No, the h-hell is wrong with you, asking me such a thing??”

Cliff just laughs to himself as he watches the land get closer. “You know, I never made it down to Italy while I was in Europe. Isn’t this where pizza is from?”

“You want pizza already? We just had it.”

“Hey, I ain’t picky, man. I love pizza. But it’s probably not like the stuff back home.”

“Well add that to your list. When I get back, the first thing I’m getting is a margarita from Casa Vega.”

“Shit, that sounds good. Mexican food in general. Doubt we’ll find any here. Alright, night we get back, we head to Casa Vega. Next morning, we get bagels. And if we’re only here for one film we should be back by April? Take me to that restaurant for this five star steak for your birthday. Then after that we book a fishing trip to catch some fish.”

“And pizza?”

“Whenever we ain’t doing the other stuff, there’s always time for pizza.”

Rick smiles, already excited to turn this plane around and head back already. Hopefully this fucking spagehtti Western is just a one-and-done deal but who the hell knows.

_“Ladies and Gentlemen, please prepare for our descent into Rome._

“Well, old buddy. Guess it’s time.”

“Yeah. Time for Rick fuckin’ Dalton to take Italy by storm.”

Rick rolled his eyes but felt the plane starting to descend and tensed up. He grabbed onto the arm rests, knuckles turning white as they got closer and closer to the runway. When it was finally over, he tried to shrug it off with a “That wasn’t so bad” kind of mentality about the whole flight.

“Well thanks for the first class treatment, man. I look forward to it again on the way back.”

“Yeah, of course. Hopefully sooner than later.”

\---

**August**

Cliff waited in his section to board the flight back home. Rick and Francesca had already been called ahead close to ten minutes ago so he had a feeling he would be in the way back of coach at this point. If you had told him this is what the return flight would be like, he’d think you were pulling his leg. But here he was, gut-punched and wondering how the hell things got like this.

_Probably the too close for comfort relationship you two had, man. Oh hell, even Francesca can see through your bullshit._

_And yet… she still married him._

Cliff started laughing softly to himself, getting a few concerned looks his way. It was already weird that he was wearing his sunglasses the whole time but it was more to prevent anyone from seeing how red his eyes have been getting. 

Even though they would be going their separate ways, they still decided to hold to their promise of going to Casa Vega that night. And since they would probably be thoroughly wasted, Cliff was going to spend the night and get his bagels in the morning. But after that, he was out. Out and with zero clue what he was going to do.

Finally Cliff’s section is called, and with a sigh he gets up and heads towards the gate. Italy gave him so many things he thought he’d never have with Rick, but then it all cruelly ripped it away from him. He was going to have a love-hate relationship with this place, who knows which one will win out over time.

“Well. At least I got a girl who loves me back home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't gonna do the August trip back home but I didn't know how to end it otherwise so end on a sad note it is!


End file.
